It’s Official: 2009 Was Worst Year for the Newspaper Business in Decades

New York Times' Richard Pérez-Peña reports in his Media Decoder blog:

"It’s no surprise that 2009 was the worst year the newspaper business has had in decades, but the scale of the damage, shown in figures released Wednesday by the Newspaper Association of America, is stunning. Advertising revenue fell 27.2 percent, or more than $10 billion, from 2008 – which was, at the time, the industry’s worst year since the Depression."

Local government and newspapers are in the same boat -- there's little money coming in.